It was as if I had thrown off the cover of a furnace. “I came to get the woman I love,” he cried. “You stole her from me! You tricked me! But, by God, Blacklock, I'll never pause until I get her back and punish you!” He was brave enough now, drunk with the fumes from his brave words. “All my life,” he raged arrogantly on, “I've had whatever I wanted. I've let nothing interfere—nothing and nobody. I've been too forbearing with you—first, because I knew she could never care for you, and, then, because I rather admired your pluck and impudence. I like to see fellows kick their way up among us from the common people.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. No doubt the fiend that rose within me, as from the dead, looked at him from my eyes. He has great physical strength, but he winced under that weight and grip, and across his face flitted the terror that must come to any man at first sense of being in the angry clutch of one stronger than he. I slowly released him—I had tested and realized my physical superiority; to use it would be cheap and cowardly.
“You can't provoke me to descend to your level,” said I, with the easy philosophy of him who clearly has the better of the argument.
He was shaking from head to foot, not with terror, but with impotent rage. How much we owe to accident! The mere accident of my physical superiority had put him at hopeless disadvantage; had made him feel inferior to me as no victory of mental or moral superiority could possibly have done. And I myself felt a greater contempt for him than the discovery of his treachery and his shallowness had together inspired.
“I shan't indulge in flapdoodle,” I went on. “I'll be frank. A year ago, if any man had faced me with a claim upon a woman who was married to me, I'd probably have dealt with him as your vanity and what you call 'honor' would force you to try to deal with a similar situation. But I live to learn, and I'm, fortunately, not afraid to follow a new light. There is the vanity of so-called honor; there as also the demand of justice—of fair play. As I have told her, so I now tell you—she is free to go. But I shall say one thing to you that I did not say to her. If you do not deal fairly with her, I shall see to it that there are ten thorns to every rose in that bed of roses on which you lie. You are contemptible in many ways—perhaps that's why women like you. But there must be some good in you, or possibilities of good, or you could not have won and kept her love.”
He was staring at me with a dazed expression. I rather expected him to show some of that amused contempt with which men of his sort always receive a new idea that is beyond the range of their narrow, conventional minds. For I did not expect him to understand why I was not only willing, but even eager, to relinquish a woman whom I could hold only by asserting a property right in her. And I do not think he did understand me, though his manner changed to a sort of grudging respect. He was, I believe, about to make some impulsive, generous speech, when we heard the quick strokes of iron-shod hoofs on the path from the kennels and the stables—is there any sound more arresting? Past us at a gallop swept a horse, on his back—Anita. She was not in riding-habit; the wind fluttered the sleeves of her blouse, blew her uncovered hair this way and that about her beautiful face. She sped on toward the landing, though I fancied she had seen us.
Anita at Dawn Hill—Langdon, in a furious temper, descending from the house toward the landing—Anita presently, riding like mad—“to overtake him,” thought I. And I read confirmation in his triumphant eyes. In another mood, I suppose my fury would have been beyond my power to restrain it. Just then—the day grew dark for me, and I wanted to hide away somewhere. Heart-sick, I was ashamed for her, hated myself for having blundered into surprising her.
She reappeared at the turn round which she had vanished. I now tooted that she was riding without saddle or bridle, with only a halter round the horse's neck—then she had seen us, had stopped and come back as soon as she could. She dropped from the horse, looked swiftly at me, at him, at me again, with intense anxiety.
“I saw your yacht in the harbor only a moment ago,” she said to me. She was almost panting. “I feared you might meet him. So I came.”
“As you see, he is quite—intact,” said I. “I must ask that you and he leave the place at once.” And I went rapidly along the path toward the kennels.